Short Term Sacrifice, Long Term Gain

If I had to condense all my financial beliefs into one main idea, I would say my plan is to provide for my needs with only passive recurring income.

I look around at my friends and acquaintances and realize many of them have little to show for their years of labor.  I don't have to look far:  my own mother is the perfect example (in fact, I'm probably the way I am because I'm rebelling against the way she raised me).  Let me explain:  Mom thinks money is flammable, and the only way to prevent it from burning a hole in your pocket is to spend it right away.  Over the years her refusal to build a safety net has led to foreclosure; she's been evicted from the apartment she moved into, she's lost every job she's ever had, and she owns nothing more than a few pieces of furniture, clothes and a beat up car.   Whenever I've tried to help her she's just blown the money on something she doesn't need.

I guess I should mention 1) that I love my mom, and 2) she doesn't know about my blog.  And in case you haven't figured it out, she frustrates the hell out of me.

Moving on...

I really don't consider the way I live as sacrificing anything, but people around me seem to think so.  I don't subscribe to cable TV because I think TV makes you lazy, plus there's just not much on TV worth watching.  The financial explanation is even more compelling:  if I assume cable TV would cost me $100 per month and I could earn 8% on that money if it were invested, I would have thrown away about $87,000 over 25 years.  I can think of many things I could do with $87,000 that would give me greater pleasure than being able to watch Hoarders the day it airs instead of later when I can watch it for free.

On the income side, I'm working quite a few hours doing mystery shops that don't pay too much.  Why do I put up with low pay?  Because I'm not where I want to be.

Where do I want to be?  I said it already:  I want to provide for my needs with passive recurring income.  The quicker I get there, the better.  So I continue to toil in the name of debt reduction, knowing that more than likely, at some point in the next 5 years, I will reach financial independence.

Oh, I almost forgot.  One of the few things Mom does have is cable TV.  She would never give that up.

49 Shops and More

Starting tomorrow I'm working a route of 49 gas stations along with a few merchandising jobs and restaurant shops.  The 49 shops are all for the same brand.  I particularly like doing shops in volume because I can get a routine going and be super efficient at it.  Repetition saves me from re-reading shop guidelines, printing out reams of instructions, and mentally switching gears.  I just focus and get it done.

I also have four restaurants (again, the same chain), 5 menu audits (again, the same chain - making data entry much easier), and three merchandising jobs (you guessed it - the same job in 3 locations).  It's gotten harder for me to justify the fees some mystery shopping companies pay and one of the ways I mitigate that expense is by cutting out costs (printing one set of instructions for 49 shops is a lot cheaper than printing 49 sets of instructions) and time (learning the scenario once for 49 jobs is much less time consuming than learning 49 different scenarios).

Over the next 7 days I'll earn more than $600 in fees, about $330 in free gas, and various other reimbursements.  Not a bad way to end one month and start a new one.

Bye, Bye Cartier

Cartier Love Bracelet

It's official:  the last large possession I acquired while working at the software company is gone.  Back in 2009 my best friend and I did a guy's weekend in Vegas. I did really well at the blackjack tables one night, and the next morning we found ourselves racing through the desert to Beverly Hills.  I wasn't totally irresponsible - we stopped at Wells Fargo first and I made a $5,000 principal payment against my mortgage.  But by the time we arrived on Rodeo Drive, I had convinced myself that I deserved a gold bracelet.

I ended up buying two Cartier Love bracelets, parting with over $9,000 in the process.  I guess that purchase is a close tie with the BMW 128i Convertible I also bought in 2009 for the Stupidest Purchase of My Lifetime award.

It didn't take long at all before I regretted the purchase.  The thing was, I wasn't sure how I could turn back.  The price of gold was steadily rising, so I thought if I waited long enough, I could sell it for the gold.  The best quote I received for the two was $2,350, so I held off.

Finally, I decided to try Ebay.  Glad I did.  I didn't get anywhere near what I paid for them, but the $5,850 I received sure helps me pay down some debt.  I probably could have gotten even more - someone made an offer for the first one and I took it; the second sold for $850 more.

I'm not totally divorcing Ms. Cartier.  I still have a money clip with her name on it that I use every now and then.  It's not gold though so it's worth much less.

Tough Job

View from the office, 1/15/12

Mystery shopping has taken me across the country plenty of times, but the view doesn't get much better than this.  Across the bridge, in the distance, is the Atlantic coast.  Incidentally, the hotel we check into today is on that coast, not merely yards from it as the one we are checking out of this morning.

I first posted about high end mystery shopping in June, 2010.  Be sure to read that page before considering getting into this line of work.

This week I am visiting 5 luxury properties in the Fort Lauderdale and Miami area.  The weather could be better as the highs are only in the 70s (okay, okay...I'll stop!).  Don't be fooled - this certainly entails a degree of effort that keeps me from calling this a vacation.  Still, I'm eating great food, sleeping in $300+ hotel rooms, and getting paid to report my observations.  It's enough to make me want to pinch myself.

I don't see myself ever working for "the man" again.

The Anti-Hoarder

I love watching Hoarders on Netflix.  It's therapeutic in some evil way.  The closest I ever came to being a hoarder was living with one.  My mother.  As a kid we had a lot of useless stuff.  I decided at the age of 12 to rebel against clutter and haven't looked back.

In the last month I've scanned hundreds of pages of documents and shredded the hard copies, taken two trips to a thrift store to drop off donations, and am meeting with a friend today to sell a few things.

I'm coming ever so close to having a true paperless home.  I have a safe full of documents I know I need to keep - my birth certificate, investment notes for a class action lawsuit, notarized deeds... too bad I can't just make electronic copies of those as well.

I've given away about 1/3 of my wardrobe in the last month.  When you consider I've spent a whopping $105 on clothing in the last 2 years you'd think I had a bare minimum set of clothes already, but that's not the case.  I could shed another 1/3 of my clothes if I really wanted to, perhaps 1/2 if I tried hard enough.  I keep hanging onto barely worn pants that will fit ...when I lose 25 pounds.  It's hard to part with those because I would feel like I'm giving up on ever losing weight.

Furniture?  Let me take an inventory:  In the bedroom I have my bed, a dresser and a bedside table.  In the kitchen there is a table with four chairs.  In the living room I have two cheap IKEA chairs, a small bookshelf, a small IKEA table that holds a lamp, and a small TV cart I use for my laptop and projects I am currently working on.  In the second bedroom there is a filing cabinet which holds office supplies I've gotten for free, a few small electronics and photo albums.  There is also a little desk in there I would like to sell.

I still feel the urge to purge.  I have an excessive amount of personal hygiene products, almost all of which I obtained free.  I imagine I could lose a few cooking utensils without missing them.  And still lots and lots of clothes.  

It feels great to shed unwanted possessions, particularly when I can sell them and use the money to pay debt. I just wish it were that easy to shed unwanted pounds!

Business is Picking Up

While I'm still not earning as much mystery shopping as I was in 2010 and 2011, things are starting to pick up.  One of the larger projects I used to work on, a major gas station retailer, will kick off again starting January 28th.  I skipped this project entirely last year but in 2010 it was a big part of my income.  I have signed up for 50 shops over the first 7 days of the program.  That week I will earn $500 in fees and more than $300 in free gas.

Next week I am shopping 5 Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area hotels.  It's the closest thing to a paid vacation one can get.

I also picked up a few of the merchandising jobs I have done in the past.  Before, I had a route of 21 stores that I regularly worked, earning around $400 over 3-4 days every 6 weeks or so.  The company that offered these jobs cut their pay to below minimum wage so I stopped doing them.  I was able to pick up a few locations at a fair but not great rate for later this month.

It looks like I'm back at it full time, at least for the foreseeable future.  The newfound motivation comes from my desire to quickly pay off some of my debt.

Debt be Damned

As the rent checks continue arriving in my mailbox I am beginning to make a dent on some of my credit card debt.  For the last three months all my extra cash was used to pay property taxes.  Now that this is out of the way, I have a little breathing room and should make steady progress.

The next major expenditure will be in June when I pay property insurance.  It should be under $6,000, which is about what I bring in from rental income in one month. I used to dread paying my car insurance but no more.  In February I will pay $178 for 6 months of liability coverage, and that's with a $100K/$300K policy, much more than the mandatory minimum in my state.  The lower rates are a combination of having just one car without comprehensive coverage, getting older, and being claim-free over the last almost 20 years I've been driving.  I also think some of my traffic tickets are finally falling off my record.

Operation Pay Down Debt, here I am.  Let's do this.  I'll have extra incentive to live miserly as I see those balances fade away.  For whatever reason, having all this debt really stresses me out, even though almost all the debt is the "good" kind (used to produce more income).  I can't wait to see those balances go to a big fat ZERO.